


Stars Shining Bright Above You

by SilverSkiesAtMidnight



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bittersweet, Christmas, F/F, Flashbacks, Hopeful Ending, MRBBsecretsanta, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Relationship(s), SVBBsecretsanta, Space Stations, alcohol use, possibly future ones too, rated t only for language, there's a fair amount of bad language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:33:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21952255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverSkiesAtMidnight/pseuds/SilverSkiesAtMidnight
Summary: Want to hear the story of the tortoise and the hare, silly rabbit?Valkyrie should tease, the echo of a smile in her voice over the comms.But she doesn’t.Instead, there’s a hiss of static for a moment, before her voice comes across, cool and detached.“Copy, Cap. Standby, I’ll open the hatch,” Valkyrie answers.Aw, what, salty because I’m faster than you?Carol should say, pushing her buttons just because she knows she can.But she doesn’t.She looks down, at the vast and petty Earth beneath her, clouds like smudges of white paint across the blank blue sea, and feels very tiny, and incredibly out of place.
Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie & Thor (Marvel), Brunnhilde | Valkyrie/Carol Danvers, Carol Danvers & Thor
Kudos: 18
Collections: SVBB & MRBB Secret Santa 2019





	Stars Shining Bright Above You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [disequilibrium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disequilibrium/gifts).



> Hey Dise!! Merry Christmas, hope you like your secret santa gift!! 
> 
> I sort of combined your space AU and university AU prompts, so I hope it's something you'll enjoy. Personally, I had a blast writing it, so I hope it came out well :D

The sound of her own breathing is loud inside her helmet as she works, the claustrophobia something she’s still getting used to. “Danvers to Houston, I’m almost done. Another two minutes tops,” she says. 

“Roger, Vers,” Fury’s voice comes through after a moment, crackled and distorted with the gaping distance between herself and the control room. “Running a little slow today, are we?” 

“Wanna come up here and try it yourself?” she says, smiling slightly. One more wire; she resists the urge to curse under her breath as she tries to get a grip on it with the clunky fingers of her gloves. 

“I think I’ll leave that to you ladies,” he says dryly. “I’m just saying, Val’s definitely going to break your record at this rate.”

“What, with her seven minutes and forty-three seconds? A _tortoise_ could beat her record,” Carol snickers, snapping the external panel back into place. “Besides, I’m finished here, Houston, and at only…” she checks the built-in watch on her suit’s sleeve. “Seven minutes and thirty seconds.”

 _Want to hear the story of the tortoise and the hare, silly rabbit?_ Valkyrie should tease, the echo of a smile in her voice over the comms. 

But she doesn’t. 

Instead, there’s a hiss of static for a moment, before her voice comes across, cool and detached. 

“Copy, Cap. Standby, I’ll open the hatch,” Valkyrie answers. 

_Aw, what, salty because I’m faster than you?_ Carol should say, pushing her buttons just because she knows she can. 

But she doesn’t.

She looks down, at the vast and petty Earth beneath her, clouds like smudges of white paint across the blank blue sea, and feels very tiny, and incredibly out of place.

***

_They meet in university, the year they have the same Introduction to Thermodynamics class. 8 am, and the teacher has the kind of voice that could put you to sleep while telling you that World War III had broken out._

_They sit next to each other for nearly two weeks before they ever speak, and the morning they do, it’s because Carol slumps into the chair beside her and grabs the cup of coffee off the other woman’s desk._

_“I’ll buy you another, but if you don’t share, I might actually die,” she mumbles, and takes a giant gulp, ignoring the way the other girl lunges across her desk, scattering her pile of notes in an effort to stop her._

_She doesn’t make it in time._

_Carol takes a gulp and promptly chokes, nearly spewing coffee across her desk as she desperately coughs against the burn in her throat and chest, eyes watering._

_At the front of the room, the professor looks up from the notes he’s preparing to scowl at her._

_“Sorry,” she gasps out, waving a hand vaguely at him. Scarlet face only partially from embarrassment, she turns to stare at her fellow student, who looks absolutely mortified. “Dude, seriously?” she hisses. “Are you even old enough to be drinking that **outside** of a classroom?” _

_“I’m twenty-three,” she snaps, snatching the cup back from Carol and aggressively straightening the notes littering her desk. “Maybe you should learn not to steal other people’s coffee without permission.”_

_“Is there even any coffee in that? It tastes, like, 90% whisky.” She tugs the cup back towards her interestedly, receiving a painful flick to the hand for her curiosity. She scrunches her face, pulling her hand back._

_“I have six more classes after this, I need the kick,” the woman tells her, pointing a pen at her warningly._

_Whatever Carol might have said in response is cut off by the professor, who chooses that moment to interrupt easily the most interesting part of his class._

_When they’re finally dismissed, she doesn’t waste a second before sticking out a hand between their desks. “Carol Danvers,” she says, smiling her most charming smile._

_Her brand-new best friend studies the outstretched hand like it might attack her. Finally, she warily accepts. “Valkyrie,” she tells her._

_Carol raises an eyebrow. “Kickass. Weird, but kickass.”_

_She stands, putting her laptop back in her bag and slinging it over her shoulder. “Come on, I promised you coffee.”_

***

The cards they play with on the station are magnetic, stuck together so they don’t drift loose in the cabin. 

“You have the worst fucking knack for throwing the card I need the moment I don’t need it anymore,” Carol says, snapping down a ten of hearts.

“Yeah, well, maybe if you had a little more patience,” Valkyrie responds drily, drawing and putting down a ten of clubs. 

“Shit,” Carol says, scowling at the card. She draws a new one, and has to resist the urge to fist pump. It wouldn’t be very dignified. “Gin!” She plops her hand of cards down, pinning them with her palm so they don’t drift away. “Look at that, I got there anyway.”

Valkyrie just gives her a look, taking the cards and starting to shuffle. They’ve stopped bothering to keep score. 

***

_The middle is the good part, the part where all is bright and warm._

_They do their work together at the coffee shop, Carol’s legs propped up on Valkyrie’s as they scribble equations in their notebooks._

_“I hate the way he teaches this stuff,” she says, squinting at her upside down page as though it would make any more sense from this angle._

_Valkyrie leans over to look, their shoulders pressing together. “That’s because you’re doing this part in the wrong order,” she says, pointing with her pen. “Look.” She tugs the notebook out of her hand, redoing the equation in swift and curling writing in the margins. “Make sense?” She says at last, looking back up._

_“Hm?” Carol says, and gets whacked in the shoulder with a pen._

_“Were you paying attention at all?” Valkyrie laughs, her sunny smile bright in the cafe light._

_“Sorry, I got a little distracted by how much I want to kiss you right now,” she murmurs, and Val smirks at her._

_“So impatient.” She leans forward, their lips almost brushing, before she suddenly stops. “Do the equation the way I just showed you and I’ll kiss you,” she whispers, and jerks back cackling as Carol hurls a chunk of blueberry muffin at her._

_Behind the counter, the barista shoots them a tired look, and Carol laughs so hard she can barely breathe, burying her face in the other woman’s shoulder to muffle her wheezing giggles. “I think we should go before they kick us out,” she manages to gasp, and Valkyrie’s hand finds its way into hers._

_“Let’s go home then,” she whispers. “The homework will keep till tomorrow.”_

_And it does._

***

Thor might be a bit of a doofus, but he’s not stupid. No one stupid makes it far enough for the government to stash them on an incredibly expensive space station for a year. 

Still, smart doesn’t always mean perceptive, and he catches Carol by surprise, just a little bit. 

“So what kind of breakup was it? Are we talking, you stole her favorite sweater and then you weren’t BFF’s anymore, or, like, she tried to stab you at a Christmas party because she was mad at your dad?”

Carol cocks her head at him, raising an eyebrow. “Weirdly specific. Is that one from personal experience?”

“Oh definitely, my girlfriend steals my sweaters all the time,” he says earnestly, wrestling with a packet of food. “She’s probably working on her research in a nest of them as we speak.”

She shrugs, returning to her own data. “You keep your secrets, I’ll keep mine.” 

“Rude.” He slurps on the finally open packet. “I have a brother. He’s dramatic.” 

She snorts. “Sounds like it.” She says nothing else.

He stares at the side of her head, sucking on the packet of food. Slowly. And loudly. 

She gives in with a groan. “We dated back in college, okay? I was majoring in aeronautical engineering, she was majoring in astrophysics, our paths crossed.”

“And then?”

“Our paths diverged,” she bites back. 

They’re both quiet for a few minutes, him consideringly, her tensely. 

Finally, he crumples up the empty packet. “Boy, I feel so lucky to be trapped in a metal tube with the two of you for a year while you reunite,” he says cheerfully. 

She looks up at him, and then, despite herself, breaks into laughter. He tosses his head back, and laughs right with her, a big, booming laugh. 

Valkyrie glides in, pulling herself along through the zero G by the sides of the ship. “What the fuck is so funny?” 

Carol just laughs harder.

***

_In hindsight, moving in together was the beginning of the end. It would have ended anyway, Carol tells herself. She’s probably right._

_When they first meet, the fact that Valkyrie pours whiskey in her coffee just to get through class is interesting. Bold. Unique._

_When they first meet, the way Carol bowls into her life without asking for permission is charmingly exasperating._

_Carol admires how Valkyrie dedicates herself to work, no matter the cost. Valkyrie loves when Carol pulls her away for a break, pressing kisses to her neck until she’s thoroughly distracted._

_But then they are not only Together™, they are **together** , by each other’s sides, at their best moments and their worst. _

_They are so young, and there is so much more of the worst than the best._

_Valkyrie is at the kitchen table when Carol comes home, as she knew she would be. She shuts the door loudly behind her, and the other woman doesn’t even look up._

_“Hey,” she murmurs, coming into the kitchen. She drapes an arm over Valkyrie’s shoulder. “Let’s go out to dinner.”_

_“‘M busy,” she mumbles, still typing. “This essay is due monday.”_

_Carol lets her arm fall away, heaving a sigh. “Val, it’s Saturday. Work on it tomorrow.”_

_“Would you fuck off?” she growls in irritation. “I have another essay after this. Do some of your own fucking work for once.”_

_Carol’s foot brushes something on the floor, and she looks down. It’s an empty bottle. She can’t see the label in the shadow of the table, but she doesn’t really need to._

_Abruptly, she reaches out and slams the laptop closed, and Valkyrie explodes._

_“What the everloving **fuck** is wrong with you?!” she snarls, standing and whirling on her. “I didn’t fucking save! You just cost me a fucking hour of work!”_

_Carol doesn’t budge as she advances. “Like you’ve ever fucking complained about an hour of work. Because what fucking else do you have to do with your life, am I right?”_

_Valkyrie stands on her toes to get in Carol’s face, the scent of alcohol on her breath. “You know what? I fucking don’t have anything else I have to do. Right now what I have to fucking do is get a fucking degree so I can do whatever the fuck I want. I don’t really give a shit if it hurts your fucking feelings.”_

_“Jesus christ Val, I’m not asking you to fucking drop out, I’m just asking for you to act like I’m your fucking girlfriend once in a while. I mean, shit, what kind of future are you even fucking fighting so hard for? Because it sure doesn’t feel like I’m in it,” she snaps back._

_Valkyrie sneers at her, and in that moment, it’s hard for either of them to feel like there is any love between them. “Just because you’re not trying to be someone doesn’t mean I’m not.”_

_**Let’s go to bed,** Carol should say. **Let’s not have this conversation right now. Let’s just try this again in the morning before we say something we’ll really regret.**_

_But she doesn’t._

_“The only thing you’re going to be is an alcoholic like your fucking mom,” she spits in a low voice._

_Valkyrie steps back like she’s been slapped, and for a long moment, Carol genuinely thinks she might punch her. Her voice, when she speaks, is almost as harsh as a punch would have been. “I don’t know why you’re even bothering with this school,” she says, tone ice cold. “Everyone knows you’re too stupid to keep up.”_

_And now, finally, Carol bites her tongue, or perhaps it’s simply crumbled to ash inside her mouth. She spins on her heel, marching back to the door. She reaches for her jacket, before realizing she never even took it off._

_“Merry fucking Christmas, Valkyrie,” she says over her shoulder. The door slams shut behind her._

_***_

_The next day, Carol doesn’t go to class. She goes to the administrative office._

_The day after that, she goes to the air force recruitment office._

_And the day after that, nothing is the same._

*** 

“You know it’s almost Christmas,” Valkyrie says, one of the nights that’s not a night in this world where the stars never sleep. 

“You don’t celebrate Christmas,” Carol mumbles into her pillow. 

“How do you know?” 

There’s silence for a long moment, before Carol rolls over to look at her in the dim starlight. “You didn’t before. You thought it was tacky and commercialized.” 

Valkyrie huffs softly. “It is. And I still don’t. But...I don’t know. I guess maybe the atmosphere has grown on me.”

“Heh.” Carol snorts quietly. “Ironic, seeing as you’re literally outside of it.”

She groans loudly. “Fuck you,” she mutters. 

There’s an echo of a smile in her voice. 

***

_Carol hadn’t really known how much she loved the sky. She’d thought she had._

_But once she’s up there?_

_Once she can feel the G-Force, once she knows what it means to fight against the pull of the earth and **win?**_

_The air force focuses her. Sharpens her._

_But it is the sky that calls her forwards._

_She uses the military to pay for the classes. And this time, she advances quickly._

_And finally, finally, she is accepted into the program._

_And it’s here that their paths come together once again._

***

They build a little tree, held together with bits of spare wiring, with cards for leaves. It’s ugly and awful, and Thor almost breaks it in half trying to find a way to attach it to one of the walls of the cabin (floor and ceiling meaning very little in this place). All three of them are laughing. 

“Shame we don’t have some champagne,” he sighs that evening, looking forlornly at the packets of food they’re all fairly sick of this far into the mission. 

“Eh,” Valkyrie says, with a shrug Carol still recognizes as being less casual than it seems. “I don’t drink anyway.”

Carol glances at her, their eyes meeting. She shoots her a hesitant smile, a tiny nod. “That’s good, I’m really happy to hear it.” 

Valkyrie smiles back, small but genuine. “Yeah, me too.” 

They look at each other for a long moment, a moment broken by Thor’s hearty declaration that at the very least, now is as good a time as any to break into the ice cream. 

Carol doesn’t miss the way he pats Valkyrie’s shoulder as he passes, and she narrows her eyes, struck by the sudden suspicion that he’s somehow befriended the both of them behind one another’s back.

Through the cabin window, the sun is rising above the earth, golden light spilling rapidly across land and sea. 

She pauses, floating beside the thick glass, no gravity pulling against her in any direction, and is struck by the sudden realization that for the first time, there is nowhere higher she must climb. 

She is already right where she is supposed to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you bunches to anyone who read this!! Comments and kudos are very welcome, I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts. Happy holidays y'all!
> 
> Side note: I did not, like, research life on a space station for this. I wanted to, but I knew I'd get obsessive and never finish the damn fic. Possibly this is just a Marvel-like universe in terms of slightly better technology but no super powers. That's what I'm going with anyway!


End file.
